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Cooper-Young resident Brad Payne went six days without power after
"mini hurricane Elvis" swept through Memphis earlier this month. But
thanks to Memphis Light, Gas & Water's Twitter account, he wasn't
kept in the dark as to when his power would be restored.

"They sent me updates on my iPhone the whole time I went without
power," Payne said. "Every time something changed or was updated, I got
a text message from them."

On June 12th, straight-line winds downed trees and power lines
throughout the city, leaving 130,000 MLGW customers without
electricity.

Payne's Nelson Street home didn't lose power until the morning after
the storm when a transformer went out. The entire street lost power,
but it was restored the next day. Then two days later, the homes on
Payne's side of the street lost power again.

"We had just gone grocery shopping because we thought our power was
back. We bought ice cream and stuff, and then we had to throw
everything out," Payne said.

A representative on MLGW's Twitter account alerted Payne to the
transformer situation after Payne tweeted his address to the utility
company.

"Twitter has been great for communication with our customers through
this," said MLGW spokesperson Chris Stanley. "We had 200 followers when
we launched our Twitter account, and now we have 1,495 followers. We
did a lot of direct messaging with individual customers who asked about
their status."

By last Friday, MLGW had restored power to all its customers, thanks
to round-the-clock work by MLGW workers and out-of-town crews. Much of
the damage happened after uprooted and broken trees fell into power
lines, once again bringing up the argument for buried power lines.

"Buried power lines may have prevented some, but not all, of the
damage," Stanley said. "We looked at [the feasibility] of burying power
lines after the summer storm of 2003, and it would have cost us about
$3 billion to do that throughout the city."

Stanley said buried power lines wouldn't prevent all power outages,
because the lines connect to above-ground substations.